But no, because I'd bolted awake before the alarm again and was in fact wide awake. Hearing the familiar swish of car wheels down wet pavement. Huh. That's as natural as your own pulse in the good ol Pacific Northwest, but here in the desert-y southland, in July, it's not quite expected. I aimed an (increasingly rabbit-y, as in twitchy and bloodshot) eye out the window, and there it was: rain. The real stuff. All wet and cleansing and symbolic of growth and renewal and etc.

After the rain, these guys showed up

And I thought: Well, damn it all. This could ruin everything.

The drizzle actually started last night during Fox's dinner party (not the All Star party, which is tonight) in Hollywood. We were outside in the courtyard of some small-ish French restaurant, now serving Cajun food in tribute to "K-Ville," the new New Orleans cop show which may or may not work out to be good. The Cajun food was a little on the shaky side, and there was something inexplicable about the lone sax player they'd stationed up in this window, leaning out and honking along with recordings of Buckwheat Zydeco, et. al, and the crowd was thin and noticeably stunned (it's not just me, I swear).

But the good news was that both Fox chiefs, Peter Liguori and Kevin Reilly, were around, and not hardly mobbed, and so they were really talking and saying stuff that maybe they wouldn't have said under different circumstances.

Entertainment president Reilly -- blond, tanned, handsome, but freakishly down-to-earth and welcoming, implying an overall nice-guyness which is real-world cool but journalistically a bummer because who can we eviscerate now? -- cradled a beer near the bar and nearly laughed with delight about how his life had changed in the last few weeks.

To review:

1. He was elbowed out of his increasingly unhappy job as the entertainment president at 4th place NBC. This despite the fact that he was responsible for one significant hit ("Heroes"), an array of smaller successes ("The Office," "My Name is Earl") and several critical smashes ("30 Rock," "Friday Night Lights") that serve as calling cards for the city's best writers/producers when they have great ideas to kick around.

2. No one wants to be fired. But in this case, it worked out magically. NBC, which had just re-upped his contract, had to pay him off. This also ended what had been a chronically unhappy collaboration with network uber-exec Jeff Zucker, who had seemingly been undermining and tormenting Reilly throughout his tenure.

3. Days later Reilly was hired to be entertainment president of Fox. Which is not only the #1 network (thanks entirely to 'American Idol') but also means he's working for one of his oldest and best pals in the industry, the similarly-nice and down-to-earth Peter Liguori.

So no wonder Reilly's all smiles these days.

Reilly: Renewed, refreshed, ready for the next disaster

And yet, the life of the network exec isn't all beers and smiles and gator bites. (like a crab cake, only chewier. Way chewier). CBS's Nina Tassler confided the other night that even the best moments in the executive life -- the advent of a huge new hit, an ascension to the top of the Nielsen ratings -- is a cause less for celebration and pride then slight, and sadly temporary, relief. "You always know something else is coming," she said. A shoe about to drop. On the back of your neck.

Hearing this, Reilly laughed and nodded. "Yeah, that's basically it," he said. He recalled the times he'd boarded an airplane with his family enroute to an overdue vacation somewhere peaceful. Only to realize, the moment his Blackberry switched on at the other end, that something awful had just happened. "You can feel the email piling up," he said, pointing to the device clipped, electronic leash-style, onto his belt. "There will be like a hundred, 150 emails. And you try to look subtly, so your family doesn't see you doing it. But it's like...Oh, (hell)." Once the electronic avalanche ends, Reilly starts with the last message, hoping that it will describe the resolution of the crisis that got the whole thing started. "Is it fixed, or is it just getting worse?" He grimaced, seemingly recalling how often the answer has been: Worse. Way worse.

Working for the pugnacious, ever-confident Jeff Zucker was another big grimace for Reilly. He hadn't gone into much detail at the morning's executive session (for obvious reasons) choosing instead to speak of the pleasures of working for old compatriot (from their days developing the killer line-up at FX) Liguori. It's just so great not to have to worry about dealing with double-talk and double-dealing, Reilly had said, sweetly. Gee, i wonder what he meant by that?

At the party I asked him how long it had taken for him to figure out that his tenure at NBC was going to be, uh, more challenging than he had previously imagined.

"About five minutes," he shot back. Which five minutes, he continued, represented the entirety of his first meeting with Zucker, his new boss.

"All he said was, 'We've already got you a "Friends" spin-off and a "Law & Order" spin-off. So that's all you need. See ya!"

Zucker: "See ya!"

Meanwhile, the network's corporate masters (at GE) expected Reilly to put NBC back on top of the ratings in extremely short order. They had a bottom line to worry about; profit/loss projections that had to be met, no matter what. And if the network's revenue faltered, their only option was to cut costs. Patience? Investment? Not part of the playbook.

"No one remembered that it takes years to turn a network around," Reilly said. "Even Brandon Tartikoff had like four, five years before he turned things around. Les Moonves took nine years. And look at CBS now."

GE execs often seemed puzzled and even disturbed when meetings turned to NBC's actual content. The stuff of entertainment -- jokes, drama, actors, creativity -- struck their ears like crazy talk. Fox boss Rupert Murdoch, for all his obvious quirks (that's me talking, not Reilly), is entrepreneur enough to respect (if not quite understand) the importance of creative weirdness.

"He just gets it," Reilly said.

And maybe that's just the sound of a company man. Or maybe it's real happiness. Or maybe it's just another all-too-brief moment of relief, the lull before he gets buried in the next avalanche of disastrous email.